The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  “We have black members.”

  Dag didn’t have the patience for an extended back-and-forth. They were playing on Jay’s home court, the owner had all the advantages. He needed to knock Jay off his game, gain some kind of competitive advantage. Dag probed: “Would you pay me if I was white?”

  It was as if he had tossed a grenade. Jay absorbed the scabrous question. The only perceptible sound was the voice in his head telling him he had treated this man seated across the table from him with nothing but respect for nearly four years, had not tried to be pals in the manner of some owners. He had expressed his appreciation of everything Dag contributed to whatever success the team had known. He was bewildered that Dag would invoke race as a factor when owners paid nearly all of the top-tier salaries to black players. But wait. Was that a wry glimmer in Dag’s eye?

  “Are you joking?”

  “What do you think?” If this question was meant tongue in cheek, Jay couldn’t tell.

  “Are you accusing me of being racist?”

  “I didn’t accuse you,” Dag said. “I floated it.” He seemed to enjoy making the boss squirm.

  Jay sipped ice water from the glass in front of him, felt the coolness on his fingers, in his throat. Tight-lipped, he stared at Dag. “When my father was in high school in the 1930s he fought for racial equality. That’s the kind of stock I come from. I was the Anti-Defamation League man of the year. And that’s an organization that doesn’t just fight hatred against Jews, either. They fight all kinds of prejudice, including prejudice against black people. You think my attitude to your contract negotiations comes from a position of race? Don’t be ridiculous. Race has nothing to do with it.”

  Dag absorbed Jay’s lecture. He waited until he was certain his host had finished. Then said:

  “I was playing with you.”

  This brought Jay up short. Had he completely misread Dag’s intent? Was he actually joking? He failed to see the humor in the topic.

  “But here’s the truth,” Dag continued, “Race always has something to do with it.”

  “Come on, Dag. You’re better than that.”

  Jay was surprised to find his own emotions riled after the implied accusation of racism, and briefly considered sharing with the player his lifelong fascination, appreciation, nothing short of love for black culture, blackness, as if that somehow inoculated him against Dag’s egregious suggestion. But then he would have been the one being ridiculous.

  “You should think about it, Mr. Gladstone.”

  “You know I’m not a racist,” Jay said. “You can recite all the theories about how everyone is at least a little bit racist, and I won’t argue that it isn’t on some level true. And by the way, I wouldn’t exclude you from this. And if you thought about it, you probably wouldn’t exclude yourself.”

  Jay waited to see how Dag would react to the last statement. Although he appeared unconvinced, he was still listening.

  “But in my behavior, both in business and in my private life,” Jay continued, “I scrupulously, and I mean scrupulously, avoid the slightest hint of ever basing any of my thinking on someone else’s race.”

  “I’m no racist,” Dag said.

  “Well, neither am I.” Jay was surprised to find his throat had again gone dry. Once more, he reached for his water glass. He took another sip, straining the ice with his teeth. He wondered if Dag had exposed something that festered within him. Was it possible he harbored attitudes that were on some level racist? He held the notion up to the light, scrutinized it from every conceivable angle. He dismissed the idea. “Now that we’ve got that cleared up, I’ll tell you two things. The first is that I’ll talk to Church and, while I can’t promise he’ll change his mind, I’ll get him to give the situation another look.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “The second thing is that I’d like you to come as my guest to the Obama dinner.”

  This was the sign that Jay viewed Dag as a social equal to the extent that he was welcome at his table for the presidential event. No other player on the team would be attending. Dag nodded, considering the proposal. He did not appear awed by the opportunity to meet the first black president.

  “Church and his wife are coming as our guests.”

  Dag was intrigued by the information that Church Scott, a man he esteemed, a coach who had won an NBA championship in his previous job, would attend.

  “Do you know Steve Ballmer?” Jay asked. Dag did not know Steve Ballmer. “He runs a little company called Microsoft, and he loves basketball.”

  “I know them,” Dag said.

  “He’ll be there, too. It wouldn’t hurt to know a guy like Steve.”

  They passed the remainder of the meal in an exchange of irrelevancies marked by the low-grade dyspepsia Jay suffered from having been put in such a discomfiting position and Dag’s veiled pleasure at having effectively toyed with what he perceived to be the owner’s self-regard. Dag accepted the invitation to the Obama dinner as a show of good faith.

  “One more thing,” Jay said. “I know I’m a little formal around the team, but you’ve been playing with us for four seasons, you’re the main guy, I think you and I have a terrific relationship.”

  “I think we do, too.”

  “Well, I want you to call me Jay.”

  “Okay, Jay,” Dag said, with a trace of amusement. He knew certain owners demanded that everyone address them as “Mr.” and others were all “Call-me-Bill-or-Bob-or-Stan.” He always felt strange calling Jay “Mr. Gladstone.”

  The check came. Dag chatted with the manager at the front of the room while Jay, in his capacity as a club officer, briefly spoke with a couple of diners about the dues assessment levied on each member for capital improvements. He hoped to be the club president when the incumbent’s term was up and asked for their votes.

  The club manager was a slender Frenchman with a fastidious air about him named Jean-Pierre. He produced a small camera and asked Dag if it was all right to take a picture with him. A waiter was pressed into service as a photographer and as Dag posed he watched Jay engage in tableside banter with the other members and marveled at how at home he seemed. Maybe Dag would ask Jay about becoming a member. Not that he wanted to be one. But he’d like to see how Jay would react to the possibility.

  “Mr. Gladstone, it is such a pleasure to see Mr. Maxwell at the club,” Jean-Pierre said when Jay joined them. “Mr. Maxwell, I hope to see you again. You are my favorite player.”

  Dag beamed and thanked the club manager.

  “I didn’t pay you to say that, did I?” Jay asked.

  “You did not pay me, Mr. Gladstone,” Jean-Pierre said with a laugh.

  The player and the owner parted with a handshake in front of the club.

  “We’re kings, you and me,” Jay said.

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Never forget how lucky we are.”

  From his great height, Dag gazed directly into Jay’s eyes. He placed a large hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “We’re real, you and me,” Dag said, situating Jay in their shared moral universe, one in which both were virtuous actors. “We do what’s right.”

  Jay nodded. That was his north star. But he wasn’t sure if Dag meant it.

  Trey answered his brother’s texted order and produced the McLaren two minutes later, freshly washed, waxed, and with a brimming tank. To Dag’s relief, the car did not reek of weed. He climbed behind the wheel and pointed in the direction of the team’s practice facility in New Jersey. On the ride through the Holland Tunnel Dag thought about what he had said at the club. He didn’t believe the man was an actual racist, any more than anyone in his position was an actual racist. But Dag was an intuitive enough negotiator to understand the value of destabilizing one’s counterpart. If he could get the owner to consider the slightest possibility that his thinking could be racially motivated, i
t might cause enough of a fissure to enable Dag to slip through and collect the riches he believed were due him. Who cared if he used gamesmanship to achieve his ends. If he could get Jay to bite on the fake, well, isn’t that what players of Dag’s caliber did? And Jay Gladstone probably was a little bit racist. Wasn’t everyone? Jay had said so himself.

  When the car emerged from the darkness of the tunnel, Dag squinted in the light and reached into the glove compartment for his sunglasses. Nestled next to them was a handgun. What was it doing there?

  “You got a permit for this?” Trey laughed, which Dag did not appreciate. “Dang, Trey, some cop stops you cause you’re a black man driving a McLaren, they gonna find this motherfucker, haul your ass to jail, and then it’s my name in the papers.”

  “How am I supposed to protect you?”

  “I didn’t say don’t have a piece, just get a damn license.”

  Frustrated with the way his day was going, Dag slipped the sunglasses on. He needed to think about how he was going to hoist his team on his back and haul them into the playoffs and didn’t have time to worry about his brother’s poor judgment.

  When Dag’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket his mood was so foul he nearly chose not to see who it was, but curiosity got the better of him. He looked at the screen and saw the phone number of his Los Angeles home. Why was his wife calling him? Probably to discuss some minor detail of the divorce. They had already settled all the larger ones. Dag did not particularly want to speak with Brittany but a sense of duty impelled him to press the icon that would initiate the conversation. When he said, “What’s up?” and heard the voice of his oldest child, six-year-old D’Angelo Jr., Dag’s attitude immediately improved. But his son sounded miserable.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The ring of cigar smoke hung over the ship-sized desk like a billboard advertising the prosperity and influence of the hefty man from whose mouth it had disgorged. The office was capacious, the walls adorned with an impressive display of sports memorabilia: framed uniforms belonging to New York baseball legends Mickey Mantle (#7), Willie Mays (#24), and as if that wasn’t enough to humble every male who stood on the carpet, there was the jersey Jackie Robinson (#42) wore during the 1955 season. Accompa­nying the baseball troika was a Giants jersey worn by Y.A. Tittle (#14) and a white Jets jersey that had belonged to Joe Namath (#12). Representing the Rangers was the jersey of the player who led them to their first Stanley Cup in forty years, Mark Messier (#11). There was a Plexiglas-encased basketball used in the NBA Finals signed by Wilt Chamberlain. A vintage pinball machine with a Yankees theme was mounted on a short plinth and lit as if it were the Magna Carta. The décor reflected the taste of Jay’s cousin Franklin Gladstone, the fifty-five-year-old mogul currently blowing smoke rings from the Havana grasped in his meaty paw.

  Jay stood in front of Franklin’s desk, a folder in his hand, watching as Franklin shifted in his chair. He could tell Franklin was struggling to present a serene exterior and the breeziness implied by smoke rings was feigned. Through the cigar smoke, Jay could discern the sharp scent of his cousin’s cologne. He was still smarting from his lunch with Dag and would rather have delayed talking to Franklin, but the forensic accountant had informed him that his cousin had once again moved funds in an unauthorized manner and so a confrontation was no longer avoidable.

  “You’re going to have me audited?”

  “I didn’t say that. Come on, Franklin.”

  “That’s what you’re implying.”

  “The financial reports you provided are cursory,” Jay said, waving the cigar smoke away. He dropped the folder on the desk where it landed next to a framed family photograph of Franklin, his wife Marcy, and their three children, taken on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean. Gazing directly at Franklin, Jay placed his forefinger on the folder. “You can’t expect me to accept these.”

  Franklin tapped the end of his cigar on the rim of an ashtray commemorating one of George Foreman’s heavyweight title bouts. He appeared to consider what Jay had just told him. Franklin Gladstone’s parents named him for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who deftly exercised authority with a patrician ease the namesake’s mother and father hoped their son might learn to emulate. These hopes had not borne fruit. Since he was a kid, Franklin had been burly. Now his bulk had swelled, and his cardiologist wanted him to lose forty pounds. All of it was sheathed in a conservative gray suit custom-tailored for Franklin in London from enough material to craft a pup tent. A violet shirt with starched white cuffs and collar, and a yellow patterned tie, all accented by a pair of cuff links fashioned from tiny crossed hockey sticks rendered in forty karat gold. His fingernails were manicured and buffed to a pearly sheen, and when he ran them through his thick, curly hair, they looked like tiny fish darting beneath the surface of a stream. Placing his hands on his lap, he twisted his thick gold wedding band.

  “You asked to see the reports,” Franklin said. “Those are the reports.”

  “And I didn’t say I was going to have you audited. Give me a break, all right? I don’t want to do that.”

  Franklin was two years younger than Jay. Their fathers had passed them the keys to the kingdom—the millions had multiplied to billions—and decreed their progeny be co-heads of what was no longer simply a real estate company called Gladstone Properties but rather, the Gladstone Group. Not satisfied with having built one of the most prominent real estate organizations in New York, the founders had diversified. As the boisterous 1980s shifted into overdrive, the elder Gladstones bought and sold companies in oil, shipping, and fast food. When the wheeling and dealing slowed down, the businesses they found most conducive to continued growth and minimal headaches, after real estate: hotels and gaming.

  The fathers had been famously close, celebrating Thanksgiving every year at Jerry’s house, and Passover at Bingo’s; even vacationing together, sailing off the Maine coast, Colorado for skiing, grand tours of Europe, all with their families in tow. Jay and Franklin bonded as kids, more siblings than cousins, with Jay in the dominant role. When the boys’ families socialized, the two threw a baseball around, or played penny-ante poker, or shared purloined copies of Playboy. Summers, they attended the same sports camp in the Berkshires where counselors organized sons of Brookline, West Orange, and Great Neck into “tribes” of Iroquois, Apaches, and Mohicans. But when Jay went off to the University of Pennsylvania, the relationship shifted. He had been the superior athlete, had performed better in school, had a college girlfriend who looked like a movie star, and Franklin—who eventually escaped to Arizona State University—grew tired of dwelling in the shadow of his more athletic, taller, and better-looking cousin.

  Franklin passed his college years in a haze of beer and marijuana. He stayed away from home for extended periods of time, often traveling during school vacations to the beaches of Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Reports of his cousin reached him: Jay made dean’s list, spent his junior year at Oxford, got accepted to the MBA program at Wharton—but the two rarely saw one another and when they did the easy rapport of their boyhood was gone. Franklin recognized that Jay would shine in any circumstance, but it was his unspoken fear that in the eyes of the world he was not his cousin’s equal. There were those that would not be bothered by this, would accept their good fortune and play a lot of golf. Franklin Gladstone was not one of them. When Jay was assigned to work on the development of a high-status property, Franklin viewed it as a personal slight. If someone in the organization did not show him the respect he believed was his due, Franklin would try to have that person reassigned or fired. This behavior did not go over well with Jerry and Bingo, who reminded him that they were a family business, one that treated non-family members like family. Employees of the firm preferred to work with Jay, who by the time he was thirty was developing real estate projects of his own and not paying much attention to his cousin.

  Two princes of such different dispositions could not hold sway ov
er the Gladstone realm together, and their prescient fathers determined that, in the service of family peace, they would divide the responsibilities. It was with this in mind that Jay and Bebe were tasked with managing the real estate empire—the family developed and owned projects in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle—and Franklin was to supervise the hotels and gaming.

  The Gladstones owned the Omniverse Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, but the majority of their gaming interests were in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macao. Because of this geography, it was a challenge for Jay to stay abreast of what Franklin was doing. The incriminating email that caught his attention several days earlier (sent by an employee in the Hong Kong office) reported a twenty-million-dollar loan Franklin had taken from their gambling operation, something he was required to report to his partners. No family member was allowed to use any of the businesses as a personal piggy bank. All employees of the Gladstone Group were required to sign a morals clause, and this included Jay and Franklin. In their case, a violation would result in removal from the board of directors and cessation of day-to-day involvement in the business. Jay didn’t need to remind Franklin of this.

  What made Jay a virtuoso was his awareness of when to dominate overtly and when to cloak his intentions in bluff geniality. To relieve the tension, he asked, “How was Macao?” Franklin had overseen construction on a state-of-the-art casino, cantilevered over the South China Sea.

  “Ahead of schedule,” Franklin said. He relit his cigar with a lighter camouflaged as a baseball, the flame reflected on the face of the chunky watch he wore. “I was on New York time the whole two days I was there. The new jet makes it a breeze.” The family had recently upgraded to the latest model Gulfstream 6, which Jay refused to fly on for ecological reasons. “Hey, tough loss against the Celtics.”

  “Heartbreaking,” Jay agreed.

  “They need a shake-up.”